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Heading into this season, the Blue Jays’ greatest strength was supposed to be their offence, which last year led the majors in runs scored by a nearly historic margin.

Given how the team was returning almost the exact same group of hitters, it seemed reasonable to expect similar success this year. But with 93 per cent of the season in the books, the Jays’ offence has underwhelmed.

In many ways their bats have been more bombastic than booming, since they have homered at the same rate they did last season, while scoring almost one run fewer per game.

Granted, the Jays have still scored the seventh-most runs in the majors and the fourth-most in the American League, so it’s hard to call their offence a weakness. But it certainly hasn’t been the kind of all-world strength it was a year ago.

So what happened? What’s different?

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In an attempt to diagnose the Jays’ offensive ills, we look at five areas where they have struggled this season compared to last:

Strikeouts

This is the most glaring difference from last season and probably the most obvious for fans.

Hitters from all teams are striking out more this year, with MLB on pace for a record number of strikeouts for the ninth consecutive season. But the Jays’ whiff rate is not only up compared to last year, it’s also up relative to the rest of the league. Last year, the Jays struck out in 18.5 per cent of their plate appearances, good for the fifth-lowest mark in the majors and nearly two points below the 20.4-per-cent league average. This year, they have struck out in 22 per cent of their plate appearances, which is the eighth-highest mark in the majors and nearly one point above the 21.1-per-cent league average. Jays hitters aren’t chasing bad pitches more often this season, but they are swinging and missing more, evident by their lower contact rate. One explanation may be the fact that teams are throwing the Jays more breaking balls and fewer fastballs this season.

Lack of timely hits

Last year, the Jays were the most successful team in baseball at hitting with runners in scoring position and in high-leverage situations. They led the majors with a .286 batting average with runners in scoring position, while their hitters were 22 per cent more productive than the league average in high-leverage situations, according to Weighted Runs Created Plus, a park and league-adjusted statistic that scales each team’s offensive output against the league average.

This season, the Jays have hit just .252 with runners in scoring position — which ranks as 21st in the majors — and while they have performed better than average in high-leverage situations, it has not been to the extent of last season. This year the Jays have been seven per cent more productive than the average team in high-leverage situations, which ranks as fourth-best in the majors.

Base-running

The Jays aren’t known as a particularly speedy bunch, but they were sneaky good at running the bases last season. They ranked fifth in the majors and second in the AL in Base Running (BsR), a statistic developed by Fangraphs that accounts for all aspects of base-running, not just stolen bases, and credits teams with runs above or below average. Last season, the Jays earned 10.2 runs above average on the bases. This year, by contrast, their base running has cost them four runs, which ranks as 20th in the majors and ninth in the AL.

Bottom of the order

When healthy and firing on all cylinders, the first six spots of the Jays’ lineup are as good as any in baseball. But last season, the Jays also got a lot of production from the bottom of the order. This year, not so much. The seven through nine spots in the Jays’ batting order have been the least productive of any in the majors this season, contributing at a rate 22 per cent below the league average.

Last year, by contrast, the bottom of the Jays’ order was the second-most productive in the majors. The seven through nine spots in the Jays’ lineup have been filled by 17 different players this season, but have mostly been the domain of Kevin Pillar, Darwin Barney, Ryan Goins, Josh Thole and, during his early-season slump, Russell Martin.

Double plays

Like the strikeout spike, this has also been painfully clear to Jays’ fans this season: they ground into a lot of double plays. This isn’t especially surprising, given the fact they have a lot of slow runners who hit the ball hard. But using Fangraphs’ Weighted Grounded Into Double Play Runs (wGDP) — which calculates a number of runs above or below average a player accumulates based on their ability to avoid double plays — we can calculate how much this has cost them.

Last year, the Jays sat around the league average, posting a 0.3 mark; this year they rank third-last with a minus-5.9 total.

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